Free Finest Hour by Dr. Arthur T Bradley Page A

went, it was far better than most they had encountered of late.
    Bowie tipped his nose up and took a few deep sniffs.
    “Easy, boy,” he warned, pressing his hand lightly against the dog’s chest. The lure of food was powerful to any dog, and Mason gave him a fifty-fifty chance of actually obeying.
    To his credit, Bowie stood fast, soaking up the odor but never pushing into the building.
    They stood motionless, leaning forward to listen. Other than the roar of vehicles racing down the highway, the only sound was the soft thump-thump-thump of Bowie’s tail thwapping against the metal door.
    Confident that things were as they appeared, Mason removed his hand and gave Bowie the nod. The dog scurried in through the open door, and he quickly followed, sweeping the room with his M4. To the right was a large walk-in cooler and, to the left, a dishwashing station and a shelf stacked with thick bundles of paper napkins. A set of saloon-style doors led further into the restaurant.
    Bowie quickly circled the room, stopping briefly to sniff the bottom of the refrigerator door.
    “Clear,” Mason called back over his shoulder.
    Leila stepped in behind him, nudging the brick out of the way and easing the door shut. Unfortunately, the lever for the deadbolt had been broken off, and there appeared to be no way to secure the door from the inside.
    “Leave it,” he whispered. “If they want in, that door won’t stop them.”
    Mason motioned for Bowie to proceed into the restaurant, and the dog plowed ahead, bumping the saloon doors open with his nose. A few seconds later, he poked his head back through, leaving Mason to conclude that the restaurant was not only safe, it was also void of anything worth eating.
    Following Bowie’s lead, Mason and Leila pushed through the doors and stepped into the waitress station. Along the rear wall was a large metal grill, coffeemakers, juice dispensers, and a glass pie case, all of them clean and empty. A long laminate counter with swivel stools separated the waitress area from a row of tables and benches. Coffee cups, plates, and water glasses were piled in neat stacks on the counter, as if the owner were preparing to put on a king’s feast.
    There were no bodies, which helped to explain the less than objectionable odors, and about half of the windows were covered with pages from the Ashe Mountain Times. Somewhere along the way, the owner had either realized the futility of his actions or simply run out of pages.
    “Not much in the way of hiding,” she said.
    Mason studied the restaurant and then looked back at the swinging doors. Leila was right. The counter wouldn’t stop much, and even if it could, it left them exposed on one end. Without a word, he returned to the back room, walking straight to the cooler door. He gave it a quick tap. The combination of insulation and stainless steel cladding appeared thick enough to stop a bullet.
    Leila and Bowie came up behind him.
    “What are you thinking?” she asked.
    He grabbed the door handle.
    “I’m thinking that you might want to hold your nose.”
    Mason gave the handle a tug and stepped back, certain that he wasn’t going to like what was inside.
    He was right.
    The cooler was filled with tubs of maggot-infested sausage, buckets of moldy pancake batter, and huge cardboard cartons stacked high with spoiled milk. A sour organic stink puffed out like the burp of a binging college student.
    Bowie sneezed and shook his head.
    “Whew,” Leila said, waving her hand in front of her nose. “I think I’d rather take my chances with the Ravagers than hide in there.”
    “Agreed. But that wasn’t what I had in mind.”
    Mason swung the door open a little further and examined the hinges. They were typical reversible cam-rise designs in which reinforced nylon pins were sandwiched by die-cast zinc straps. He grabbed the front edge of the door and lifted. Both nylon cams slid up, but he wasn’t quite strong enough to lift them free of the